


Reflections

by hollo



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Homesick, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Memories, Reminiscing, Starboy: A Lance Zine, good memories, good things, lance and blue bonding time, reflections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 18:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13506960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollo/pseuds/hollo
Summary: ~ originally printed in Starboy: A Lance Zine ~...Nostalgia filled him, a distinct and deep sadness that was becoming like a close friend. It came now and then, sometimes falling on him swiftly and sometimes creeping up, silent and nearly unforeseeable, like a thief in the dark. He’d thought he’d get used to it eventually, used to the distance and the lack and how everything and everyone he knew and loved was so, so far away. Sometimes he thought he had - but maybe he’d just gotten used to putting it aside, ignoring it during the day and during the missions so he wouldn’t be distracted from whatever Voltron was being faced with at the time. And they were faced with so much, an entire universe of unknown that they had to face down and deal with, day after day after day...





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally printed in Starboy: A Lance Zine, the blog of which you can find here: https://lancezine.tumblr.com/
> 
> Thank you everyone for all your support with the zine!
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this.

Lance sighed, gazing out across the wide expanse of softly rolling hills at the base of the mountain. Behind them the second sun was setting, casting the sky in hues of deep emerald green and vibrant purple as the dark edge of night hovered overhead. Above the far horizon, twinkling stars were just barely beginning to come into view.

"You know what would make this even better?" Lance said, and Blue responded with a questioning rumble. "Rain. Rain would make this just... gorgeous. Not a lot of it, you know? Not like, a  _ downpour _ , but like... light rain. A few rain clouds. I bet these hills and mountains would look really cool wet, the colors would probably be even more vibrant, you know?"

Blue rumbled again, settling her bulk along the ledge so that her paws and head came to rest near him. The sound was questioning, thoughts - more like  _ feelings, _ like instinctive  _ knowing _ \- flitted through Lance's head, and he look at her in surprise.

"You don't know what rain is?" He asked, shocked. "I think about it all the time!"

Blue seemed amused by that, and he was filled with the  _ knowing _ that she understood it - knew  _ of it _ because of him - but she'd never experienced it, not like he had. She guessed it was like sea spray, like flying through the upper levels of atmosphere among the droplets of ice frozen so high up there and feeling them splatter against her metal frame - but different, on some level.  

"Yeah," Lance agreed, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the cloudless sky. "It is different... It comes down from the sky, when the clouds let it loose and sometimes it’s warm and soft. Sometimes it’s cold, falling hard enough that it almost _hurts_ when it hits your skin. Sometimes it’s a huge storm!” Blue rumbled at that, thoughts of wind-whipped sands and roiling waves reaching Lance, and he laughed. “Like that, only, you know. Not like that.”  
He gazed out over the colorful expanse of hills and low mountain ledges before them, and sighed.

“I miss it.” He spoke softly, words barely there, his voice little more than an exhale. “I miss the rain... Blue, I miss Earth - there’s… I know there’s so many planets that are similar but none of them… none of them are  _ home _ , you know?”

A rumble of understanding, of something like comfort.

“None of them really have the same scents, or the same look. None of them have my favorite foods or my shows or my…” Lance’s voice shook then, almost breaking, “Or my family..."

Nostalgia filled him, a distinct and deep sadness that was becoming like a close friend. It came now and then, sometimes falling on him swiftly and sometimes creeping up, silent and nearly unforeseeable, like a thief in the dark. He’d thought he’d get used to it eventually, used to the distance and the  _ lack _ and how everything and  _ everyone _ he knew and loved was so, so far away. Sometimes he thought he had - but maybe he’d just gotten used to putting it aside, ignoring it during the day and during the missions so he wouldn’t be distracted from whatever Voltron was being faced with at the time. And they were faced with so much, an entire universe of unknown that they had to face down and deal with, day after day after day. 

But right then, he couldn’t find it in him to put it aside again - somehow, under the darkening sky, with the lower cliffs of the mountain at his feet and the colorful valley spread out before him, he couldn’t hold back the swell of memories that woke within him and clambered to the forefront of his mind.

“Sometimes, when it rained…” Lance said softly as he let it all wash over him, voice almost a whisper and almost not speaking at all, knowing Blue would hear him regardless. “We’d go out in the rain, all of us. Maybe not  _ mami _ and  _ papi _ , not every time, but the rest of us and… and we’d…”

He could almost see it, the memory suspended in his mind’s eye until it almost felt like he was there. There was a pressure at the back of his mind, a presence pressing in, familiar and comforting but strange in how he felt it, a touch he’d only felt a couple times before and only shortly, shortly enough that he barely remembered - but he didn’t pay it much attention because there, in front of him,  _ they were  _  - his siblings, dressed in colorful raincoats but barefoot in the rain, jumping in the puddles with shrieks of laughter. His cousins too, the younger and the older, joining in on the fun. And there was the rain, falling from the sky just like he remembered it, just how he longed for it. It wasn’t heavy - the clouds stretched across the sky were light, with the sun breaking through here and there and setting the falling rain drops glittering, the puddles sparkling. The rain was warm and refreshing, he imagined - was he imagining it? It felt so real, the soft patter of it against his skin, warm like a hug, almost, like a close embrace. It felt familiar and happy, and the tug inside his chest woke with a fierce longing that prickled his eyes. His siblings were still dancing around him, raincoat hoods falling back as they jumped, eyes glittering in joy as they shrieked up at the sky.

He wanted to be there so badly it hurt. He wanted to be able to take their hands, tug them into a dance, pull them into an embrace. He wanted to throw his head back and feel the rain stream down his face, sting his eyes and soak his hair. For a moment, for half a moment, it felt so real, felt like he had gone  _ home _ , even though he knew it couldn’t have happened, and a bittersweet pain pulsed somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.

“You didn’t have to help,” Lance said softly, leaning deeper against Blue’s paw as his eyes slid closed, finally realizing it was her meddling across their bond that had brought the memory into such clarity. The vision seemed to deepen around him, the images becoming more vivid if not more solid, and Blue’s quiet laughter rumbled through his head. It still caught him off guard, just how easily, how simply, she could reach through their bond and touch him like this, influence him on a level he’d never could have imagined. Maybe it should’ve been a little frightening, that she held such a power, but he trusted Blue more than he’d trusted anyone in his life, and it was more of a comfort than anything else.

Before him his family continued to cavort among the rain, as beyond them the buildings and the road seemed to peel away, fade away until he could see the sea beyond unobstructed, the sunlight painting vivid patches of light across the swirling, rain-ruffled surface. It was entirely fantastical and unreal, and yet somehow he wasn’t disturbed by the oddity in the least.

Blue’s presence touched him again, another shot of something like nostalgia - like a belonging he used to know, a memory he’d never forgotten because it hadn’t been his to forget  - shooting through him as the scene shifted sideways, like a movie reel. His childhood neighborhood, his family, the sea, all seemed to fade, exit stage right as the vision of a new world shifted into view. Rocky ground, dusty gray and red, dotted with bushes of brilliant fuschia and emerald green sprouted before him. He could sense other presences, could feel the heat of a sun across his skin. His view was high, very high, high enough that the bushes looked like paint stains on the dusty ground - then it shifted, lowering so suddenly he was hit by an exhilarating burst of vertigo.

It was Blue’s memory, he realized with an excited tremble, and he was seeing through Blue’s eyes. She was crouching down, head lowering before a crowd of assembled alien people he couldn’t recognize. They had more appendages than humans, several that looked like arms and legs, a couple that looked nothing like arms, with bulbous, gelatin-quivering heads and no eyes or mouths to speak of. There was a cacophony of noise, as distant as the memory was old, but Lance could still feel the exuberant joy of it all. As Blue’s head settled, he could feel the way her mouth opened, though he couldn’t see it, and in a moments a figure was striding out to meet with the aliens gathered before them. Around them Lance could just see the forms of the other lions, all of them crouching to let their paladins out, but all he could focus on was the form before him, dressed in the familiar armor of the blue paladin.

He couldn’t tell the details - couldn’t really tell what their body looked like, how tall they were - but it didn’t matter because, in the face of the welling emotion that rose from Blue in response to the sight, it was irrelevant. Love and devotion filled Lance to the point where he couldn’t even tell what was what anymore, that he almost felt as if he himself had known the paladin who stood, talking amiably with the crowd before him.

“You miss them, too, don’t you?” Lance asked softly, and Blue’s response was a wave of nostalgia and sadness and longing. He’d never been able to ask, how they were separated, how it all had ended, but he got the feeling, sometimes, that Blue wouldn’t have wanted to remember that anyways. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, just how close Blue was with her previous paladin, just how much she missed them, if what he had felt was a true example of the depth of her emotions then it must’ve been  _ so much _ … and all she had now was  _ him _ ...

Blue’s presence rumbled through him suddenly, sharp and admonishing like a thunderclap, so unexpected he actually jerked upright, eyes widening in shock as he gazed up at her. She hadn’t moved, but her presence seemed to have changed somewhat, as if she were giving him a stern look. Before his eyes images flashed - their first meeting in the cave, their first battle, various moments where they’d spent time together, where Lance had been making small repairs, where they’d careened through the atmospheres of a dozen different planets, carefree and happy - and Blue’s presence swelled within him, full of love and caring and acceptance that he could feel tears gathering in his eyes despite himself. She may have been devoted to her previous paladin, she seemed to be saying, but she was absolutely and wholly devoted to  _ HIM _ now.

“Aw, you love me that much?” Lance asked, trying for something like bravado as he fought against the overwhelming surge of emotions that rolled through him, and leaned back against her paw. “Well who wouldn’t? I mean, I am pretty amazing.”

Blue’s agreeing chuckle resounded around him, and he grinned up at her, the setting sun’s last rays highlighting the sharp edges of her head and body as it cast the further planes into darkness. The air was growing cool with the disappearance of the sun, but Lance ignored it in favor of curling up closer to Blue, basking in her warm presence, in her attention. 

“It’s not that bad, is it?” He said, eyes turning from her towards the rapidly darkening sky above. With no light pollution, no smog clogging the atmosphere, the stars appeared rapidly and brightly as day turned to night. “At least we’re not alone.”  
Blue agreed, their teammates faces flitting across his awareness as various memories were pulled up. They’d been through so much together, Lance thought, it was hard to imagine anymore that there was a time when they weren’t a team, when they weren’t together, when they hadn’t been able to work together in a smooth coordination. There was a time when Allura and Coran didn’t exist, he thought; a time when Shiro was just a name and an image to aspire to, when Keith was that distant, weird guy he’d struggled so hard to catch up with, when Pidge was just that weird nerdy kid assigned as his coms officer, when Hunk was just his best friend -

Well, wait, that wasn’t right. No one was  _ just _ a best friend, best friends were ride-or-die, best-friends were made, they didn’t just happen. They were honed and they were tempered in the experience of dozens of hare-brained ideas and adventures - and Hunk and Lance had been on  _ so many _ he honestly couldn’t remember the number anymore, and that was just the ones back on Earth. He was lucky, he realized, that he hadn’t come into this alone, that his best friend in the world (the universe) had been taken on the ride along with him.

Lance smirked, eyes still tracing constellations above him as he spoke,

“Did I ever tell you about the first time Hunk and me snuck out of the Garrison to go into town, and almost got caught by _Iverson_ but got away at the last moment?”  
Blue’s presence washed over him, amused and prodding, and so he settled down, grinning wide as the story unfolded,

“It was all thanks to my plan, of course, that would’ve gone off  _ without a hitch _ if only…”


End file.
